The treble clef in its usual form appeared in the sixteenth century, when instrumental music was born. But its background began at the turn of the first and second millennium AD. Then the Benedictine monk of Guido from the city of Arezzo in the Italian province of Tuscany came up with how to record music using notes. To designate a sound, it was necessary to invent some symbol.
The notes in their present style are solely due to Guido d'Arezzo. After him, the music recording system was improved, but it was this monk who laid the foundations. At the beginning of the line he wrote in
Latin letters the note with which the melody began. The letter G, denoting the note "salt", served as a prototype of the treble clef.
What is its function? Five lines of the musical staff can accommodate eleven musical characters. A treble clef indicates which ruler (second from bottom) is the “salt” of the first octave. The range of notes located on these five lines when recording with a treble clef is quite enough for most musical instruments. However, this is not suitable for everyone. There are instruments of very low and, on the contrary, very high sound. If you record a melody for them, you will have to apply additional rulers. They can be bottom or top. When reading a melody from a sheet, this is very inconvenient. In order to record music for different instruments, the treble clef was little adapted. Therefore, several more signs of this kind were invented. These are bass, alto, tenor and some other keys.
What is the difference between the two? The bass clef indicates where the “fa” note is located on the small (next down from the first) octave. She is on the second line from the top. The baritone is slightly higher than the bass, so the baritone key places the same note on the middle ruler. The alt symbol on the same line places the note “before” the first octave. Why is this happening? The fact is that viola is higher than baritone or tenor.
In total, eleven keys are now used in practice. In the past there were much more, but in the process of developing this type of art, most of them disappeared as unnecessary. To record the highest (in the musical sense) sound, a soprano or treble clef is used. He places the note “before” the first octave on the first ruler from the bottom.
The treble clef is not suitable for recording parts of percussion musical instruments. For this, a special “neutral” symbol is used. Indeed, for percussion instruments the concept of pitch does not mean anything. The main thing here is the rhythm and volume. It is recorded in two versions.
In the first case, these are two thick parallel vertical lines that abut against the second and fourth rulers of the musical staff, and in the second - an elongated rectangle, slightly not reaching the extreme lines.
The popularity of the treble clef as a musical symbol even provoked a fashion for a tattoo. Among musicians, he is considered the personification of creativity and indicates that the owner of a fashionable tattoo belongs to people of art. But on the “zone” the tattoo “treble clef” can have a completely different meaning. It will bring to the person who inadvertently made a tattoo in the form of this musical symbol, a lot of trouble. As a rule, he is injected with homosexuals.
However, the opinion of the criminal community regarding this tattoo was not completely settled. Therefore, depending on the place of application and the graphic nuances, the treble clef may also mean that its owner has a free, wild life. However, the price of error in this case is too high, so more and more inhabitants of places of detention prefer not to get involved with a dubious tattoo.